


Mary Me

by mixedwithintellect



Series: Sign of the Times [1]
Category: Don't Let Me Go - Harry Styles (Song), Kiwi - Harry Styles (Song), Medicine - Harry Styles (Song), One Direction (Band), Sweet Creature - Harry Styles (Song)
Genre: 1940s, AU, Angst, Best Friends, F/M, Love, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 21:03:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15804531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mixedwithintellect/pseuds/mixedwithintellect
Summary: the one where he proposesOR:The 1940s installment of the Soul-Mates verse.





	Mary Me

The room was swathed in a deep maroon. Curtains draped against the windows, curves forming around the sills and down the gold columns on either side. 

It was a nice restaurant, with expensive-looking candles and fresh-cut flowers on each table. The bar wasn’t fully stocked enough for the crowds milling about, having yet to find its balance of supply since Prohibition ended a few months ago. It was a rough adjustment for everyone, with the prices taking a jolt and the people having to remember what a drink tasted like without poison.

While the idea of a fancy restaurant would allude towards privacy, this dinner was anything but. Granted, it was a personal room but the numerous crowds of friends and family around the table led the mood towards something more lively than dim lights and slow jazz. Tables were pushed against the walls, only a handful actually sitting down, and the band had taken its land near one of the corners, setting up an orchestra to dance for.

It was a gathering, a party.

Nerves were knotted against the floor of your stomach, and despite having a glass of champagne in one hand and hooch in the other, nothing was easing the clench. Perhaps it was residue from hardships that had only ended a few years ago, or it could be the more  _instinctive_  nerves - holding alcohol without needing to look over one’s shoulder was still new for everyone. Even now, you saw Nick stealing a glance at the waitstaff, as if sussing out which was the cop.

“‘lright, love?” Harry spoke low, his hand briefly resting against your back as he came around from behind. It wasn’t far into the party, enough time having passed for his entrance to be marked by everyone already feeling tipsy, but not raising an eyebrow at his late arrival.

His suit was understated, a black with minimal design. His mother would tailor all of his suits, resulting in most of them being the absolute extravagant pieces for all the parties he threw - the magnificent ones where the moon grew twice to try and be an inch closer, where the ocean glittered around his villa and you could strain to taste the rose-colored smoke in the air. They were alive with people and spirits and spirited people, and the types who would disappear in the morning and you’d question their existence, but never their stories.

His suit was fine, but his hair was a proper mess. Harry had insisted to you a few days ago, a dopey smile on his face as he leaned against your shoulder, that it was a rebel of the highest degree.  You knew the words were bullshit, but the way he spoke sounded like a home you’d never known, so you listened.

“You need a haircut.” The words came out before you could properly hold them back, the liquor having moistened your throat and disconnected your mind from your choices.

Harry broke into a smile, this time shaking his head slightly so the curls danced, delighted, in the dim glow. 

“You like it?” he asked, and you made a sour face in response. He took one of the drinks from your hands, making the low noise in the back of his throat to signal disapproval. Where Harry managed to gather his rebellious streak of societal indignity, but still manage to believe that women should be held up on pedestals and protected, eluded you. 

But you were still dizzy with him. Drunk in the way he said your name, caught up in his eyelashes, a fatal swoop in your chest that felt like laying in bed after a long day’s work. You were simply infatuated, but insistent on the fact that the feelings drifted no farther. Infatuation could be controlled, but  _love_. 

Love would be an entire beast that you couldn’t battle. It would include leaving him, leaving him because Mary was cemented down in his roots. Not that you’d agree with it, but she was, and it was a reality you lived with.

They’d been sweet on each other for the first couple months. You hadn’t kept up on the details too much. But time had worn their feelings thin, wafering holes poking through in the way they loved. Which was a wrong, horrendous source of comfort to you - but it terrified you, as well. Harry was the embodiment of love, with how he danced and moved and swayed into the moonlight, and yet there was something off in the way he loved Mary. It felt like a commitment for the sake of, rather than motivated each day, and the failures of love haunted you.

“Where’s Mary?”

Harry shrugged, taking a swig of the drink and looking against the crowd. The two of you were propped against the wall, as if only existing in the plane of the party by the physical constraints. If you had your way, your souls would fall through the wallpaper and into something more exquisite. 

Harry had a way of making the dullest parties exciting, and you wondered what he had up his sleeve. But his face showed no signs of telling, a crease along his forehead denting in his sudden gloom and moodiness.

“Dunno. Was gonna find her, thought she’d be with yeh.”

That was his mistake, his constant mistake, of seeking his love around you. It was there but not where he expected - it was manifestation he sought, the woman he called ‘darling’ on late nights out, not the friend he called ‘love’ because it meant nothing.

Words didn’t quite fit your mood, so you merely shrugged and shifted your weight between legs. The music had picked up but your feet had been worn to the bone by running all over town the previous night, so you prayed Harry’s stance next to you would dissuade any men from approaching.

“Think I’ve got to end things with Mary, yeah?”

It was a loaded question, especially with Harry’s eyes staring into yours. It was a rush, how the lights cascaded down the side of his face and his hair was a horrible mess, an unsightly vision for anyone in town, but he was utterly angelic nonetheless. It was a weird sensation against your throat, seeing him tragic and sad, and not knowing how to respond that wouldn’t be an attempt to benefit your own tragic and sad.

“Why’d you say that?” you asked.

“It was never right, was it?” He spoke thoughtfully, scanning your face for agreement, and apparently finding some, for he continued. “It’s reached an end.”

Silence befell the two of you, yet it was heavy with the implication of further words against his tongue. They weren’t spoken yet, but you felt with one more moment-

“I’ve got somethin’ I need to say to yeh. After it’s done.” His eyes had swept to his feet, the dirty tips of his shoes from the soil around the town. 

You both were misplaced, you felt it in your soul and the way you two would wrap in each other’s auras, clasped at the hands and promising you’d escape this hellhole of a town one day. And it only was proven in how Harry’s eyebrows sloped together, a defiance in the order of things prominent in his pursed lips.

“Okay,” you drawled it out, but Harry didn’t seem to find anything humorous. With a tilted neck, his Adam’s apple bobbing and drawing your eyes in like flies to honey, he downed the rest of your champagne.

“See her over there,” he mumbled, slipping back into the throngs of the party. He was still incredibly visible, a mess of hair and clunky shoes passing through the sea towards his girl. She was sat, pretty and prim, but you could tell she felt only half. Mary had an odd sense about her, a jealousy towards you for sure, but a feeling around her sphere of influence that she wasn’t full unless Harry was there. Half-dazed without, only focused on him with, there was seemingly no win.

The pair of them slipped out into the night together, with your eyes trailing behind. Mary was oblivious as to how the conversation would go, and for that, you were conflicted.

It must have made you an awful person, how the nerves crashed against giddiness. The drinks may have kicked into effect, because before you knew it - you were swaying and dancing against the moonlight, around the tables with the rest of the folk, pained heels clipping against the floor as they did every night, dancing out the mundanity of a town life crippled with the distrust of life. It would be a conversation for the rest of the night, how Harry would retell the dramatic discussion with fire in his eyes and a sadness plunging into his heart, because he always felt guilty and you’d never understand why.

* * *

You glided out of the mass, panting with how the dance took your breath away, feeling the redness built up in your cheeks and the sweat on your brow. You passed Nick with his wide eyes and bursts of laughter, and noticed how he winked at you when you left the room. The restroom was calling.

The main hall of the restaurant was bustling with normal activity, waiters dashing around with massively weighed trays balanced against their shoulders. There was a coat rack near the entrance, huddled with pounds of jackets, hats, and scarves, and a lone Harry Styles squatted next to it.

He looked up when you passed by, the hollows of his cheeks straining purple in the grotesque lights.

You paused next to him, almost dashing around to head and pee, but his expression caught you off guard..

He looked in another world. His eyes, blue with morose, opened to look at nothing. Eyelids heavy with almost boredom, but his posture offered enough to let you know his demons were free once more.

“What’s wrong?” you asked, and once he shifted to the side, you took the cue to sit beside him, crossing your legs and ignoring your body’s protests.

His mouth open and closed, his fingers spread wide in front of him to grasp onto his senses, but they were nowhere to be found. His lips were glistening, perhaps from him licking them continuously, but a small streak against his cheek made you think otherwise.

“Was she upset?” It was all you had to offer, but it seemed like you hadn’t struck gold. He continued to mime whatever words that were escaping him, but your attention had been caught elsewhere.

In one of his hands, you had thought he was holding onto his pack of cigarettes. At second glance, however, it wasn’t. It was terrible.

The fact it wasn’t, and the fact his mouth was gaping, and the fact his eyes were glassed and that his shoulders were quivering – it all accumulated into a story you never expected.

A blue velvet box, iconic in its time, holding only one thing inside.

“Harry, is that-”

“She’s pregnant,” he managed to choke out, not glancing at the box, his voice cracking in its sudden revival, “Mary’s pregnant.”

“She’s  _what_.”

“Couldn’t break it off, would she gonna do? Can’t go back to live with her parents, the town’s too far off-” he continued to speak, words that made sense when combined but gibberish with how he stringed them. It was a rant that had been built into his lungs and found a small stream to blow off, with only your collection of stammers breaking through the dam.

“Did you–’re you–is  _that_ –”

“Proposed. Bit rushed, didn’t get on a knee, but it did its duty. I did mine, anyhow,” he said, a desperate gloominess clutched your dress as he presented the box. His fingers fumbled against the velvet, nubbed fingertips and signs of bitten skin surrounding the nails. 

Opened, the box was empty. The contents were stuck on Mary’s finger, presumably back at the party showing off the latest development in her life.

“Congratulations.” It didn’t feel as if it were you who said anything, the voice too breathless and at ease to have come out of your body, with its thundering heartbeat and screaming mind.

“Gotta get a job, gotta call up Howard ‘n see what’s not ‘n the papers. There’s gotta be something, yeah? Need a crib, now, too.” It was clear his mind was far off, into what he needed to do, in the adult-life that neither of you had never quite fit into, but was now thrust upon him.

All your mind was on, was the trip you two had been planning for the past year. Harry had promised train tickets across the country, down towards where the sun always shone and the waters were constantly warm around your ankles, even in the dead of night. Maps and notebooks had cluttered your office for months, with strings attaching your future endeavors in a maze of findings. It had started out as an escape from the Depression, the one that had seemingly ended but never quite had, the one where your throats were aching for more than speakeasies could offer.

It wasn’t going to happen. It simply couldn’t. You’d never see how he would look, dozed off across from you on your hundredth train, his backpack used as a makeshift pillow. You’d never feel the brutal mountain winds with him. You’d never be able to wander around the greatest cities of America, you’d never explore all the lives you could’ve lived, in towns you never knew existed.

The realization brought you to another moment, another question, one out of place with Harry’s rant but in tune with how your blood ran cold.

“Where’d you get the ring?”

That snapped Harry’s attention, and his bloodshot eyes managed to find you in their blur. Perhaps it was an expectation, for you to ask, but the surprise against his lips, how they parted with a slacked jaw and a sharp inhale, said otherwise.

“Wha’?”

You repeated yourself, and he staggered into a motionless statue of himself, a final shake of his shoulders until he ceased to move. Just stared at you, haunted.

_I’ve got somethin’ I need to say to yeh._

“Harry _._ ” To your surprise, it almost sounded admonished. 

His eyes were pleading for you not to speak. For speaking would bring it into existence, and he could never juggle it all. Neither of you could, it was a mortal flaw that ran deep into your flesh, and now against your heart, where it felt it would stay forever. 

You felt compelled to speak anyway, motivated slightly by the intoxication and the exhaustion and the bitterness in which life was taking from you continuously, without ceasing, and this was the one chance to take something back for yourself. To give a bit of yourself back towards him, to offer a glimpse of the life that could’ve been.

“I would’ve said yes.”

It was quiet.

You thought Harry was being quiet, as well, but his hands reached up to wrack against his scalp, collecting at his hair and his head went between his knees.

He gave a nod, a gentle movement from your perspective, and a choked cry. It was stifled by the sudden uproar within the restaurant – perhaps another fight, perhaps another birthday, you didn’t care – and your arm went around his shoulder, bringing him into your chest.

You cried. Tucked away, hidden behind swaths of clothing that had belonged to the rich and now hung off the poor, surrounded by lights and glamour that suddenly became cheap and instrumental, compared to what you two had deserved. He felt warm against your skin, his forehead now pressed against your shoulder as his body pushed forward in distress. Time stretched to allow for you both to have one moment, a solace against the blazing sun of normalcy. It was one minute until Anne would burst through the party doors, searching for her son, perhaps having caught a glimpse of the truth and knowing where his heart truly was.

But for that minute, his heart was in your chest, the beats matching up, the pair united for a last breath.

The box slipped from his fingers and landed on the floor, half-open and completely empty.

It was a reality you’d have to live with.


End file.
